U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/836,041 and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/470,068 are commonly assigned to the assignee of the present application. The disclosure of related U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/836,041 and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/470,068 are hereby incorporated by reference into the present disclosure as if fully set forth herein.
1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of supply chain analysis and more specifically to determining a policy parameter for an entity of a supply chain.
2. Background of the Invention
A supply chain supplies a product to a customer. Items needed to produce the product may pass through the supply chain according to policy parameters set for the items. A known technique for determining the policy parameters for items may involve segmenting the items into groups according to predefined features and then applying specific policy parameters to the groups. Known techniques for determining policy parameters, however, do not provide for effective segmentation of items. It is generally desirable to effectively segment items to determine policy parameters.